Mike Leigh, on the eve of the release of Hard Truths, has been chatting about when he had to test screen his 1996 movie, Secrets & Lies. Mike Leigh has a brand new film out in UK cinemas this week, and it’s a terrific one. Hard Truths is the end result of a process that ... Mike Leigh on the time he had to test screen his film
Mike Leigh, on the eve of the release of Hard Truths, has been chatting about when he had to test screen his 1996 movie, Secrets & Lies.
Mike Leigh has a brand new film out in UK cinemas this week, and it’s a terrific one. Hard Truths is the end result of a process that Leigh himself calls something of a “trade secret”, whereby he works with actors over a number of months to develop characters and the eventual film.
Leigh has worked the same way across each of his films, but that approach isn’t always compatible with the people who pay the bills. Oftentimes, he’s struggled to raise funding because he can’t quite tell people what they’re going to be paying for at the conception of a project. Hard Truths, though, is the latest example of how the ends of that justify his means.
Still, just because his approach goes against the norm, that doesn’t mean that people haven’t tried to get Mike Leigh to go along more conventional paths in the past. In the case of his multi-Oscar-nominated Secrets & Lies, one of his most successful films, Leigh even found himself subjected to a test screening.
This was at the insistence of one of the film’s backers, French production company Ciby 2000, who wanted to cut certain sequences out of his 1996 drama. Leigh stood his ground, and in an attempt to break the impasse, Ciby 2000 organised a test screening in Slough.
Mike Leigh is a guest on this week’s Film Stories podcast, and I asked him about this. He confirmed that he was indeed in attendance at the test screening. “I wasn’t in the decision making, it was their decision” to hold the screening, Leigh said. But also, “I was there in Slough. They showed the workprint in its raw [form]… unmixed soundtrack, no music. They showed it to an audience of 300 people, and then they had a Hollywood-style questioner. Ticked boxes on forms. It was a complete and total waste of time.”
“It taught them absolutely fuck all,” he said.
There was also a test screening of Vera Drake he remembered. That took place in “Brighton or Bournemouth or somewhere, but it didn’t make any difference. It was a gestural thing. But the Secrets & Lies one got them nowhere really. And as you know, after a lot of shenanigans, we did win the battle.”
He certainly did. His cut of the film went to the Cannes Film Festival, where it took the top prize, the Palme d’Or. The film earned Oscar attention, and is revered as one of Leigh’s finest.
Now? He’s working this year on his next feature as well. Just don’t ask him to test screen it when it’s done.
You can hear the conversation with Mike Leigh in the second half of this episode:
